This is one of those occasions where I know in advance that reviewing this piece of software is going to be a pleasure. Anything by Axialis is always top notch and Axialis Professional Screen Saver Producer is no exception.

At first glance this program has so many features that you think you are going to need a university course to be able to master it, nothing could be further from the truth it is very simple but at the same time very professional. I will give you just the main features here and if you want a full list go to the Axialis site http://www.axialis.com and be amazed and I make no apology for reproducing a small part of it below.

The range of screen savers you can produce using this program is very comprehensive. You can produce almost all kind of screen savers based on sprite animation (a sprite is an animated and/or moving image). This new version lets you also create screen savers based on Shockwave Flash (no limit to your imagination!), Image Slide Shows (display your favorite photos) and Movies (Quick Time, Mpeg, AVI, RealMedia...). You can compile and produce Windows 95/98/NT/2000 SCR compatible files with Control Panel preview. Several options are available: Sprite collisions at different levels with sounds; MIDI, MP3 or MOD/S3M/XM Background music support; Multi-resolution support; Several Background effects; AVI, MPEG, QT Video Sequences support; FLI, FLC, GIF Animations support; Compilation with image compression; Customizable screen saver About dialog box, and more... One more thing, produced screen savers are compatible with all video configurations (screen size and color depth).

There is an excellent WYSYWYG editor so you can see exactly where you are placing objects, text etc and you can keep testing your work in full screen mode as you go. As well as the editor there is also a powerful built-in librarian to let you easily manage all your media and screen saver projects files. This is a dockable window (which can be hidden) where you can store, move, copy and extract all the files you're using in your work (images, video, sounds and music). Very easy to use: Double click to open a file in a window (even animations, music, video...), use Drag & Drop to add it in a project. And best of all, you can find a specific file using a powerful search feature.

I found it remarkably easy to use and with the versatility of this program I was soon putting together pretty impressive stuff with colliding sprites with sound and revelling in the Shockwave Flash based option to produce full screen Shockwave Flash screen savers. With the Personal Edition costing only $29.95 (surely that can't be right it's worth loads more) this is a "must have" piece of software. Screensavers produced with this version can only be distributed for non commercial purpose.

Corporate edition is $59.95 and this edition allows you to make installable screen savers and distribute them for commercial and/or profit purpose without royalties.